Cars

Pixar's latest vehicle arrives in a rather stripped-down package.

For 20 years Pixar has been the gold standard for technical innovation in computer-generated animation starting with shorts like Luxo, Jr. and Red's Dream before moving into features beginning with Toy Story. By the time they made the Oscar-winning The Incredibles, Pixar had supplanted their distributor, the venerable Walt Disney studios, in the minds of many as the brand that could be counted on to deliver high quality storytelling as well as sparkling eye-candy visuals.

With a six-for-six track record, Pixar's expectations that Cars would continue their dominance were understandable and with the director of both Toy Story films, John Lasseter, calling the shots, success was almost a forgone conclusion. Unfortunately, while Cars is a technically stunning achievement, it has a shockingly obvious and thin story which starts off stuck in the pits, running out of gas long before it reaches the finish line.

Set in a world straight out of Al Gore's nightmares, Cars is a world which looks just like ours, but populated only by automobiles. Just like our world, stock car racing is huge and the hottest star is rookie Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson). When the final race of the Piston Cup series results in a three-way tie between Lightning, points co-leader Chick Hicks (Michael Keaton), and current champ The King (stock car legend Richard Petty), it is decided that a tie-breaker race will be held in a week in California.

Lightning is an arrogant showboat with raw talent in inverse proportion to his sense of humility. He aggravates his pit crew into quitting; he detests his sponsors and the rusty cars that cluster about the low-rent operation; and he lusts mightily for the Dinoco sponsorship that automatically comes to the winner of the Piston Cup. His only remaining friend - if you can call him that - is Mack (John Ratzenberger), his transporter truck.

After being accidentally unloaded in the dead of night on the highway, Lightning finds himself lost in the dark - stock cars don't have headlights - and stumbling into the one-traffic-light town of Radiator Springs, he accidentally wrecks havoc, tearing up the road and landing in the impound lot. Waking up, he meets a rusty tow truck, Mater (Larry the Cable Guy), the first of many one-dimensional caricatures that populate the town.

Sentenced to repaving the damaged road by the gruff town doctor and judge, Doc Hudson (Paul Newman), Lightning has to race to finish the job and make it to Cali for the Big Race. Will he make it? Will he have time to slow down and learn about the colorful stereotypes that populate the town? Will he be smitten with the curvy Porsche, Sally Carrera (Bonnie Hunt), who left life in the fast lane for a town bypassed by both progress and the Interstate? Will Lightning learn a Very Important Life Lesson? Do we really have to wonder?

Cars gets loose in the marbles from it opening moments by presenting us with an antagonistic protagonist for whom there is little to root for and plenty to root against. While prior Pixar leads have had flaws that needed to be overcome, they were fundamentally decent people&#Array;er&#Array;fish, bugs, monsters or toys, but Lightning is a first-class a-hole for whom being stripped and left on blocks seems an appealing starting point for karmic retribution. Being such an obvious toolbox means that almost every story beat is predictable from the get-go. It's no surprise that his looking down his hood at the little people, whoops, cars means that he will eventually be learning that the little cars are people, too.

The storytelling laziness extends to the stereotypical characters and casting choices made. The low rider is named Ramone and voiced by Cheech Marin; the Ferrari-obsessed Italian tire store owners are Luigi (Tony Shalhoub) and Guido (Guido Quaroni); the Army jeep, Sarge (Paul Dooley), lives next to the hippie VW bus named Fillmore (George Carlin) who sells organic fuel and blasts Jimi Hendrix's Woodstock rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" while Sarge has a bugle playing.

Having Entourage's Jeremy Piven play Lightning's shallow, fast-talking agent and Car Talk hosts Tom and Ray Magliozzi voice Lightning's sponsors and make cracks about not "driving like my brother" is so obvious that it can't qualify as being clever or inspired. Pixar has never stooped to such stunt-casting before - the casting of The Incredibles with Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Jason Lee and Sarah Vowel, not exactly obvious choices, comes to mind - so it's disappointing to see such sloth here; especially when it appears we're supposed to be amused by the casting itself and not by anything said. The actors are competent, but there is little spark to their performances, because there's little for them so say.

Adding to the letdown is the leisurely Sunday drive pacing of the film, which clocks in just shy of two hours, making it at least 45 minutes too long for such a slender tale to be told. How it took three story writers, six screen writers and seven additional material writers to come up with a story that can be summed up as, "Don't be a jerk and stop to smell the roses," is baffling. Yes, it's a darn shame that the kitschy highway bergs along Route 66 have withered into the stuff of nostalgia and it's too bad that taking leisurely road trips with the family has been replaced with near-instant plane trips to distant destinations, but that's no reason to take forever harping on the metaphor.

There are also a couple of troubling lapses that reduce Cars usefulness as a babysitting tool for negligent parents. In one scene, Lightning races and narrowly beats an oncoming train. While such a scene occurred in The Fast and the Furious, not many children saw it and want to be Vin Diesel. (I'm surprised some kid hasn't been splattered by a train, his last words being, "I'm Lightning McQueen!") The final race scene also has a mixed message with one racer blatantly exhibiting poor sportsmanship and cheating to win. While they end up with a hollow victory, they aren't disqualified for their actions and while some may get the lesson that it's better to be a losing mensch than a poor winner, others may just decide that a win is a win and act accordingly.

While the story and characters are as flat as new blacktop, the visual leap that Pixar's technical wizards have made is breathtaking. When you see the cartoonish-yet-photorealistic cars and environments, it's hard to believe that these images are created by the same ones and zeroes that once strained to create the gray and boxy world of Tron, not that long ago. The world reflects radiantly in the dusty metallic-painted surfaces, lending tactility that is somewhat incongruent to the big-eyed windshields and wagging tongues emanating from the fascias of the cars. Water splashes and wooded roads look as if they could have been shot on location.

Meanwhile, the art direction is cute, with the distant mountains mimicking the silhouette of the famous Cadillac Ranch and mesas and buttes subtly formed into the contours of vintage autos and car parts. Throwaway gags like the insects being shaped like VW Beetles are wittier than any line of dialogue in the script.

While it's difficult for even the greatest teams to stay undefeated, it's still disheartening to see Pixar plow into the wall as they've done with Cars. Too long in length and way too short on inspiration - the best bit in the whole movie occurs during the end credits where previous Pixar films are recast into this milieu as Toy Car Story and Monster Trucks, Inc. with hilarious results - Cars ends up being the lemon in a fleet of cherry rides. If it was an actual race car, its result for the day would be an unsatisfactory "DNF". While Pixar's reputation has taken some dents here, hopefully with a little rubbing and buffing they'll be able to cruise back to the winner's circle soon.